Larry King Show - 23. März 2001

KING: Tony, did you use to tell him? Because you are the most anti-smoking person I ever knew?

RANDALL: I think that's true. I think I'm responsible for some of the anti smoking laws, as a matter of fact. I didn't allow smoking on the set. But he would...

KING: You knew he smoked?

RANDALL: He would smoke off the set.

KING: Did you try to tell him not to?

RANDALL: Try to tell jack anything.

KING: Never worked.

RANDALL: No, no!

KLUGMAN: You should have seen outside the door to the set. You know, there would be 40,000 butts, people would hold the door open, smoking, watching for Tony to tell them not to smoke, then
they'd put it out and go in, so everybody was smoking outside. They wouldn't listen to him.

Boy, am I sorry.

KING: Yes, you ought to be.

How did you two get this part? All right we all know the "The Odd Couple" was written originally, the Neil Simon play. It starred Walter Matthau and Art Carney. The film starred Walter Matthau
and Jack Lemon. How did the television show come together, Tony?

RANDALL: I'm damned if I know, I really don't. Garry Marshall was at Paramount, and came to see me and asked me to do it. That's all I knew.

KING: You liked it right away? Let's do it?

RANDALL: No, I had to be talked into it. And then we had to find an Oscar.

KING: So, you were first, they hired you first.

RANDALL: Yes

KING: Jack, how did you get it?

KLUGMAN: Let me tell you, now I replaced Walter Matthau on Broadway years before we ever did this. So. when Garry Marshall called me, I thought he'd seen me do it on Broadway and that's why he
wanted me. He said, "No, I never saw you." I said, "So why did you want me?" He said, "Well, I saw you in 'Gypsy' and Ethel Merman was singing to you, and she was spitting all over you. And I
said, 'You know, that's a good actor, he's not showing that she's spitting all over him,'" That's why he hired me."

KING: And the amazing thing about that show is it wasn't a hit, right?

RANDALL: "The Odd Couple?"

KING: Yes.

RANDALL: We were on for five years, and we were in the bottom 10 for five years.

KING: Why did they keep you on?

RANDALL: There was a guy named Marty Starger (ph) at the network, and he liked us and he kept us on. KING: On ABC, right?

RANDALL: Yes.

KLUGMAN: It was also cheap.

RANDALL: There aren't people like that around anymore.

KLUGMAN: It was also very, very cheap.

KLUGMAN: I mean, we couldn't ask for a raise because they'd fire us, and we had the whole thing, the whole show, license and everything, was $125,000 a show. The kids on "Friends" make more in
three days, each one, than we made in five years of doing "The Odd Couple." That's why they kept us on cheap.

RANDALL: And certainly more than Neil Simon made. He didn't make anything.

KING: He sold it off, right?

RANDALL: He didn't realize when he sold the rights to Paramount to make the movie, that he was selling the television rights.

KING: The hit became in reruns, right?

RANDALL: And Jack always predicted it. He said someday we'll be back in reruns and they'll find out how good we are.

KING: And it's still running. We'll take a break. We'll be right back with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. Can't do better than that.